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[mp3] Learning to Love Low Bit Rates … on the experience of listening to low quality MP3’s … ‘The underwater compression of a low-quality mp3 is our generation’s vinyl crackle or skipping CD. It’s a limitation of technology that defines the experience of an era.’

[music] How the compact disc lost its shine … A look at the rise and fall of the CD … ‘The CD was introduced to the British public in a 1981 episode of the BBC’s Tomorrow’s World, in which Kieran Prendeville mauled a test disc of the Bee Gees’ Living Eyes to demonstrate the format’s alleged indestructibility. It caught the public imagination, but Immink found the claim puzzling and embarrassing because it was clearly untrue. “We should not put emphasis on the fact it will last for ever because it will not last for ever,” he says. “We should put emphasis on the quality of sound and ease of handling.” (Paul McCartney recently recalled the first time George Martin showed him a CD. “George said, ‘This will change the world.’ He told us it was indestructible, you can’t smash it. Look! And – whack – it broke in half.”)’

[tip] How to Narrow Down Exact Duplicated Music Files in iTunes … ‘To see all Exact Duplicates in iTunes, Click File from the iTunes menu and then hold down the Option key. Display Duplicates should now change to Display Exact Duplicates, which should result in a shorter list of duplicates.’

[tags: MP3, Music, Weird][permalink][Comments Off on Iron Maiden’s Number Of The Beast MP3 Compressed 666 Times]

October 23, 2009

[music] The £10,000 playlist … Phil Gyford on iTunes Vs. Spotify… ‘…what I like about my music library is that it’s small. Relatively. I know my way around it. I feel daunted by having to choose between six million tracks on Spotify. Where to start? Option paralysis. My music library is a reflection of me, a reflection of my life since I bought my first CD. As I’ve grown up, the city has also grown, from hamlet to metropolis. It will keep growing, but it still carries my history within.’

[music] How it feels to be sued for $4.5m by the RIAA … ‘I came home from work to find a stack of papers, maybe 50 pages thick, sitting at the door to my apartment. That’s when I found out what it was like to have possibly the most talented copyright lawyers in the business, bankrolled by multibillion-dollar corporations, throwing everything they had at someone who wanted to share Come As You Are with other Nirvana fans.’

[mp3] We’re Stuck with MP3 — why the standard music compression format isn’t going to be replaced anytime soon… ‘The newer audio formats, including Ogg Vorbis, seem to have at least two things going for them compared with MP3: smaller files and less expense. But because any change would require conversion of billions of files – a royal pain in the butt – it just won’t happen.’ [via 2lmc]

» BBC releases Reith Lectures online as MP3s(es) — Tom Coates on the release of the MP3’s … ‘Hopefully it’s the first open distribution of many programmes of this kind – enlightening, significant and weighty pieces of work that actually have the potential to make the world a better place – available for free from the BBC.’

[mp3] The World’s Most Dangerous Geek — profile of the Justin Frankel the creator of Winamp … ‘By 1999, Winamp and Shoutcast put digital music — and its young creator — on the map. And America Online wanted in, to the tune of $100 million. Frankel responded with two words: “Holy crap!” In addition to acquiring Nullsoft in the summer of 1999, the company paid $300 million for Spinner, the leading online-radio service at the time. These were the boom years, and the message was loud and clear: The future of music was on the “information superhighway,” and Justin Frankel, hired to further develop Winamp as the standard MP3 player, was going to drive it. And AOL was going to own it. In a statement, AOL’s chief operating officer, Bob Pittman, the guy who had previously created MTV, trumpeted, “Combining these leading Internet music brands with the audience reach of our brands will lift music online to the next level of popularity.” He had no idea. ‘

[mp3] UK song-swappers ‘could be sued’ … ‘Speaking at a London conference about music and technology, Mr Yeates said any legal crackdown would be “proportional”. Talks were taking place with internet service providers across Europe to streamline a process for identifying those who distribute the most songs, he said. The move comes despite healthy album sales for the UK industry. Album sales in the UK rose by 7.6% in 2003 to a record high, fuelled by falling CD prices.’

[books] First chapter of Sonic Boom — a book about Napster, MP3’s and the future of music … ‘From that moment forward, Fanning would appear frequently dressed in a Metallica T-shirt, most famously as a presenter at the MTV Music Awards, where Ulrich sat in the audience looking sick. It was difficult to say whether the Beavis and Butthead like fashion statement was meant to be mocking or merely the honest expression of a fan laced with a little irony. Whatever the case, Ulrich made clear that, as far as he was concerned, being a Napster user and a Metallica fan were incompatible: on television and the Internet, he directly told fans who used Napster that the band didn’t want their types.’

[mp3] Top 10 Bootleg Napster MP3’s. Eminenya is well worth downloading … ‘The lush celtic strings of Sail Away clash with the vocal from the Real Slim Shady, speeded up by a factor of about three. A nightmare within a dream.’ [via Popbitch]

[mp3 tech] News about the long awaited WinAmp 3 starts to surface… ‘3.0 features Winamp’s most advanced playlist mode yet. Instead of a long list of songs within one playlist, users will be able to view all of their playlists easily with just one click. Songs will be listed on the right-hand side of the playlist window, along with their respective length, album name, artist, and so on.’ Oh… and here is an apparently better MP3 decoder for WinAmp 2… MAD plug-in. YMMV.

[tags: MP3, Music][permalink][Comments Off on ‘…we’re legitimate nihilistic media terrorists as history will no doubt canonize us.’]

August 30, 2000

[mp3 people] Inside has a facinating profile of Justin Frankel — the man behind Winamp and Gnutella. ‘Frankel hasn’t been able to resist all contact with the dozens of hackers who are working on new versions of Gnutella, according to one programmer who works on file-sharing software. But Gene Kan, who is creating a version for a startup now called GoneSilent, points out that the new software ”can’t have a single line from the original AOL-controlled code — his fingerprints can’t be on it anywhere.” ”He’s peering over the fence,” says the person who sees him frequently. ”They’re doing the revolution and he’s supposed to work on stuff like the transition from Winamp 2.64 to Winamp 2.65 or some dumb thing.”’

[music] Yet another “Death of…” story, this time about CD’s and Cassette’s. ‘Although he sees a time when tangible media disappears altogether, he believes it won’t be for a long time yet. “CDs are a collectable item. People want all the artwork and sleeve notes so they can find out just who it was who played guitar on track three!”‘

[mp3] Lars Urich and Chuck D talk about Napster. “It’s a parallel world, and a new paradigm is taking shape. You have to adapt to it. This goes beyond Chuck versus Lars. This is about the record industry versus the people. The people have got it on their side, and you’ve got to adapt.” – Chuck D [via Josh Blog]

[MP3] The Register points out that the phrase MP3 has been sprayed on statues and walls in Whitehall after the Mayday protest: ‘Quite why these hardened anarchists and eco-twats felt the need to paint a computer format alongside cries for revolution is unclear – is this the first sign of an internet generation, lost and disillusioned and unable to function without a keyboard, crying out for attention? Who cares.’

[tech] Richard Stallman on Metallica: Metallica justifies their lawsuit saying they think it is an outrage that their music has become a “commodity”. Apparently they think music is a commodity when shared between fans, but not when large companies sell copies through record stores. What hypocritical absurdity! Such drivel is normally laughable. But Metallica is presenting it as an excuse to attack our freedom, and that is no laughing matter. I encourage people to write letters to periodicals that cover this story, stating disgust for Metallica’s lawsuit and rejecting their views. [via Slashdot]

[mp3] Another MP3 application I use all the time MP3ext gets updated. Useful if you have a large collection of MP3’s stored on a Windows PC. It enhances Windows Explorer so you get a properties pages when looking at MP3 files. Very useful and free as well!

[Mp3] More shit flies over MP3 / Napster — various links: You can PayLars if you feel guilty about downloading bootleg Metallica MP3’s of the net. Dr Dre warns Napster [interesting thread about this on Metafilter: Napster is nothing more than the new mix tape].

[MP3] “Napster? Never heard of it mate” — UK reaction to Napster/MP3. It’s not an issue in the UK because nobody can afford to download MP3’s anyway. I reckon students are probably starting to get interested in it but you need free networking to make it fly like it is in the States — especially at American universities.